I AM an addict. I have a 164-page, Bok-covered, staple-fastened monkey on my back. And it’s been there, more or less, since I was nine or ten or like that, way back before the Flood. …
When I was a kid, back in the middle of the 1930’s, I was the sort of kid who thought it was more fun to poke around the back-corner shelves of the public library than to be out catching flies on second base (or whatever it is you do on second base). Now, I do not mean to put down those of you who would rather be out catching flies on second base: there isn’t anything wrong with fly-catching: it just isn’t my bag, that’s all.
doI had already eaten my way through the Oz books, Mary Poppins, The Wind in the Willos, Tom Swift, and the now-neglected works of a gentleman called Roy Rockwood. (…as you can see, t
